Digital skills of vulnerable people

The current crisis can become an opportunity to democratize technological change

Project

The project Digital Push promotes digital skills of vulnerable people in order to foster their creative skills and use them as a means for promoting themselves, their craft and ultimately improve their working conditions, bonds and environments.

Goals of the project: 

  • To raise awareness in people with low digital skills for the digital transition and technological updating, especially in the cultural and creative sector;
  • To empower unemployed people with low digital literacy in digital skills, increase their employability potential and promote their work and craft;

To use design thinking methodology to train unemployed people and help trainers in their role of supporting low digitally skilled people.

The final aim of this project is to achieve a greater balance in the labor market thus investing in education in a time of digital and ecological transition.

Digital Push brings a set of innovative factors that touch different dimensions of the project structure, either in its type of education (non-formal education, using a mentoring strategy) or in its methodology (through Design thinking processes such as collaboration, co-production creation and creative problem solving), as well as the tools to be created and used (based on this perspective co-production and creative problem solving).

See all project results and learning materials here:

IO1: EU Guide for Digital Inclusion >  https://www.digitalpushproject.it/io1/ 
IO2 : Mentoring programme for digital readinessand creativity fostering > https://www.digitalpushproject.it/io2/
 

Target

According to the Eurostat database EU27 unemployment rate was at 7.4% in August 2020, with 5.4 million people moving from employment to inactivity and 4.4 million moving from employment to unemployment.

In terms of the level of digital literacy, in 2019, in the EU, 29% of individuals had overall low digital skills; Regarding the partner countries, the same indicator was as follows: 37% in Turkey, 32% in Italy, 24% in Sweden and 22% in Portugal;.

There is a need to confront this crisis as an opportunity to democratize technological change, which will bring many benefits such as job creation, better working conditions, increased productivity, among others. The challenge is to provide fair access to digital tools and skills to everyone as a bridge for quality employment.

The project targets some of the most vulnerable and low skilled individuals such as unemployed people and workers with a lower educational level, informal market workers (and other precarious employment contracts), low-skilled entrepreneurs and cultural and creative sector workers, as well as, educators, trainers and social support technicians – which frequently contact those populations and more easily and directly help in their digital learning experiences. 

Low-skilled adult jobseekers have previous work experience and formally and informally acquired competences, making them ‘job ready’. Often, they have family responsibilities and this can lead  them to be reluctant to enroll in training courses for longer periods of time, due to the need to work a full time job. 

In all the cases, however, centered approaches may be required to integrate the most hard-to-place low-skilled adult jobseekers or those who need re-skilling due to restructuring. The approaches which support the integration of jobseekers are increasingly tailored towards individual needs as a result of profiling and development of individual action plans. 

In the Digital Push project, we propose the Theory of Change (ToC) as the basis for the Pilot and the activities that we intend to implement with the target groups. Onone hand, we will use appropriate methodologies and practical exercises to involve them; on the other hand, ToC helps to identify the desired long-term goals and then works back from these to identify all the conditions (outcomes) that must be in place for the goals to occur. These are all mapped out in an Outcomes Framework that provides the basis for identifying what type of activity or intervention will lead to the outcomes identified as preconditions for achieving the long-term goal. Through the ToC, the precise link between activities and the achievement of long-term goals are conceived in a visual form and can be better understood. This leads to better planning, because activities are linked to a detailed understanding of how change actually happens. It also leads to better evaluation, as it is possible to measure progress towards the achievement of longer-term goals that goes beyond the identification of program outputs.

Multiplier Event

The Digital Push  challenge is to provide fair access to digital tools and skills to everyone, including creative workers, as a bridge for quality employment.

The Digital Push Multiplier event, took place in Sweden, Italy, Portugal and Turkey, hosted by the differents partners organisations adressed to low digital skilled people, unemployed people, creative sector workers, employment and training institutions and technicians, social support & public institutions and technicians, cultural departments and institutions, trainers, educators, policy-makers.

The events helped disseminate Digital Push learning materials and innovative tools and contributed to creating the expected impact on low digital skilled people, unemployed people, creative sector workers, employment and training institutions and technicians, social support & public institutions. 

The multiplier event provided attendees with the opportunity to gain insight into

opportunities, and needs, discover good practices and practical tools to improve their own or future business.

Participants were invited to join the Digital Push website, Resources and Online Platform, and participate in learning materials of the project.

The goal of the events was to raise awareness of the topic and help stakeholders understand the business opportunities that this project offers and how to use them individually or as a group of institutions and policy makers. 

  • to raise awareness about the importance of digital literacy through the guide for digital inclusion; 

  • to increase the employability of workers from the cultural sector through digital skills;

  • to disseminate the methods, strategies, and tools developed during the project implementation and the Digital Push workshops, by the partnership

  • to replicate the methods, strategies, and tools to other contexts using the guide for digital inclusion, the Theory of Change, the mentoring programme. 

 

                                             TIME LINE

First TPM
3rd-4th March 2022
The first face-to-face meeting held in Lund, Sweden. After the pandemic process was left
behind, updating of the Interim reports and finalizing project result 1 (IO1) process was
discussed at this meeting.

Second TPM
16.06.2022
The second meeting held in Trofa, Portugal. Project output (IO1) was reviewed again. Also,
evaluation steps of IO1 and work plan of IO2 were determined at this meeting.

Last TPM
10.05.2023
The last face-to-face meeting of the Digital Push Project was in Foggia, Italy. At this meeting,
partners were discussed timeline and deadline of the Project results (IO1, IO2). Project
website was reviewed by the all partners. Also, partners decided the dissemination plan,
multiplier events, and other deadlines before project ending